Annabel: A Delirium Short Story (7 page)

“It’s really disgusting,” my mother says. “If we’d started bombing when the trouble first—Tony, look out!”

Tony slams on the brakes. The tires screech. I go shooting forward, narrowly avoiding cracking my forehead on the headrest in front of me before my seat belt jerks me backward. There is a heavy thump. The air smells like burned rubber.

“Shit,” my mother is saying. “Shit. What in
God’s
name—?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t see her. She came out from between the Dumpsters. . . .”

A young girl is standing in front of the car, her hands resting flat on the hood. Her hair is tented around her thin, narrow face, and her eyes are huge and terrified. She looks vaguely familiar.

Tony rolls down his window. The smell of the Dumpsters—there are several ofarep> them, lined up next to one another—floats into the car, sweet and rotten. My mother coughs, and cups a palm over her nose.

“You okay?” Tony calls out, craning his head out the window.

The girl doesn’t respond. She is panting, practically hyperventilating. Her eyes skate from Tony to my mother in the backseat, and then to me. A shock runs through me.

Jenny. Lena’s cousin. I haven’t seen her since last summer, and she’s much thinner. She looks older, too. But it’s unmistakably her. I recognize the flare of her nostrils, her proud, pointed chin, and the eyes.

She recognizes me, too. I can tell. Before I can say anything, she wrenches her hands off the car hood and darts across the street. She’s wearing an old, ink-stained backpack that I recognize as one of Lena’s hand-me-downs. Across one of its pockets two names are colored in black bubble letters: Lena’s, and mine. We penned them onto her bag in seventh grade, when we were bored in class. That’s the day we first came up with our little code word, our pump-you-up cheer, which later we called out to each other at cross-country meets.
Halena.
A combination of both our names.

“For heaven’s sake. You’d think the girl was old enough to know not to dart in front of traffic. She nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“I know her,” I say automatically. I can’t shake the image of Jenny’s huge, dark eyes, her pale skeleton-face.

“What do you mean, you
know
her?” My mother turns to me.

I close my eyes and try to think of peaceful things. The bay. Seagulls wheeling against a blue sky. Rivers of spotless white fabric. But instead I see Jenny’s eyes, the sharp angles of her cheek and chin. “Her name is Jenny,” I say. “She’s Lena’s cousin—”

“Watch your mouth,” my mom cuts me off sharply. I realize, too late, that I shouldn’t have said anything. Lena’s name is worse than a curse word in our family.

For years, Mom was proud of my friendship with Lena. She saw it as a testament to her liberalism.
We don’t judge the girl because of her family,
she would tell guests when they brought it up.
The disease isn’t genetic; that’s an old idea.

She took it as almost a personal insult when Lena contracted the disease and managed to escape before she could be treated, as though Lena had deliberately done it to make her look stupid.

All those years we let her into our house,
she would say out of nowhere, in the days following Lena’s escape.
Ev="T

“She looked thin,” I say.

“Home, Tony.” My mom leans her head against the headrest and closes her eyes, and I know the conversation is over.